The numbers crunched in his favor over the weekend, though, and after Troy Merritt missed a 10-foot putt on the 72nd hole, Ogilvy snuck back in at No. 100 in points and started packing for a trip to TPC Boston.

“I’m here thinking this is kind of a bit of a bonus for me,” Ogilvy said. “I haven’t had amazing success here, but I quite like it. You can’t get to Atlanta without getting here.”

A few weeks ago, it looked like the Aussie was headed for a prolonged offseason after failing to notch a top-10 finish through his first 20 starts of the season. A win at the Barracuda Championship earlier this month turned his year around, though, and he now finds himself among the final 97 players with a mathematical chance at winning the FedEx Cup.

“Mentally I’d already decided or accepted that that was probably my fate this year, I was going to have a bit of a break and reset,” he said. “The clubs would have stayed in the club locker for a month, and I would have dropped the kids off at school and picked them up, and done all that sort of stuff. And had a couple of beers, maybe watched football on TV.”

Despite his long odds, Ogilvy can draw inspiration from countryman Stuart Appleby, whose runner-up finish at Ridgewood vaulted him from No. 98 to No. 19 in the standings. After a season with only two prior top-10 finishes, Appleby is now likely to make the field of 30 at the Tour Championship.

While that sort of volatility may not sit well with players whose season-long achievements put them near the top of the points race, Ogilvy feels the importance given to the postseason events is appropriate.

“If you want these tournaments to be bigger than just the normal Tour event, it has to carry some sort of weight like that, I think,” Ogilvy said. “If you want the season to climax, and to come down to qualifying for this and the best guy these four weeks wins it all, it kind of achieves that.”